"Unicorn" comes from the French and late Latin, with the "cornus" part meaning "horn". I am wondering what other English words share this root. I could think of "rhinoceros". Can you think of something (or multiple somethings) else?

Rhinoceros? Sure, it's the same PIE root, but from Greek rather than Latin.
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Peter TaylorApr 7 '11 at 12:42

The ancient Biblical Hebrew word for horn (of an animal) is "keren." Anyone else think that may be where the Latin connection comes from?
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Faith SchamesJan 8 at 23:49

@Faith Schames - An interesting hint. In my view there might be a connection. But there is not much to be found on the Internet about possible relations between semitic and IE words.
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rogermueJan 9 at 4:51

@FaithSchames It has been suggested and is reasonably commonly held that the Proto-Indo-European root was borrowed either to or from Proto-Semitic at some point (similar to the number seven, PIE *septḿ, which is almost universally considered a loan word from Semitic). Unlike with ‘seven’, though, there’s nothing unusual about the root in either language, so we don’t know which way the borrowing went.
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Janus Bahs JacquetJan 9 at 10:50

5 Answers
5

The Latin word for horn is cornu, stem cornu- (with null-inflection in the nominative case). Note that Latin cornus, "cornel/dogwood", comes from a different Proto-Indo-European root and is not related. Rhinoceros comes from Greek keras, horn.

Both Latin cornu and Greek keras come from the same PIE root *ḱer- (very frequently, and seemingly somewhat at random, expanded to *ḱerh₂- ), which meant something like "horn, head" (note that there appear to be other PIE roots *ker- that are not related).

The examples Snumpy and Trideceth gave all come from Latin cornu-. The following words come from the PIE root *ḱer- through Latin, but not from Latin cornu-:

cervix

cerebral

triceratops

rhinoceros

The word horn comes from the same PIE root, but not through Latin: the /k/ sound was lenited to /x/ or /h/ in Proto-Germanic, as Colin Fine said, which is why we have /h/ now, just as in other Germanic languages.

+1 for a very good answer. But a nitpick: /k/ did not "disappear" in Germanic (the way /p/ really did disappear in Celtic, for example) but was lenited to /x/ or /h/, just as /p/ was lenited to /f/.
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Colin FineApr 7 '11 at 16:19

@ColinFine: Ack, I knew someone would catch me! At first I had an even worse expression. Then I changed it to this, but I knew I should have looked up what happened exactly to the k, apart from the fact that it is now an h; I knew this was weak, but I was too lazy to look it up. I will incorporate your comment into my answer, if you don't mind. I figured "disappeared" might be taken as "it didn't exist after a certain time, when something else came instead of the k"; but I know that isn't the right way to say it.
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CerberusApr 7 '11 at 20:55

1

To be exact, the PIE root is *ḱer- (very frequently, and seemingly somewhat at random, expanded to *ḱerh₂-), rather than *ker-.
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Janus Bahs JacquetJan 8 at 23:57